Matt C. Abbott
Priest-M.D. pens essay on politics and the Church
Matt C. Abbott
The following essay was provided to me, upon my request, by Father Robert Markovitch, M.D., a Catholic priest of the Eastern rite. (For those who would like to disseminate Father Markovitch's essay, I ask only that you link to and/or cite my column as the original source.)
On Guiding the Barque of St. Peter through the Dangers of the Presidential Election
By Father Robert Markovitch
Having trouble sorting through the issues important to Catholics in the upcoming elections? A good and wise sense of history will help one see clearly.
We Catholics belong to a society, the Catholic Church, in which the fullness of the Church founded by Christ abides in a stable manner. However, we Catholics do have problems at the local level. If you want to know what these problems are, look to the beginning of the Catholic Church in this American democracy and notice what was new and interesting at that time. The stage was set for these new challenges when Catholicism first arrived in the New World.
As we travel through history, it should become apparent that our beloved Catholic Church is in a battle with a competitor and is in danger of becoming the victim of identity theft. When the danger is apparent, who will step forward to defend our Church?
The Catholic Church Before America
The Church in America came from Europe, where she had weathered many storms. Christ gave full power to the Apostles, some of whom preached in Europe, and they established this power in bishops. The first storm that caused significant damage to the Church in Europe was the Great Schism. The Church breathed with two lungs, Greek and Latin, but split into a schism of two groups of bishops. Latin Catholics stayed in unity with Rome — most Greeks landed outside of union with Rome as the "Orthodox Church" — though a substantial minority found themselves to be "Greek Catholics" in full union with Rome. Then, just when the "New World" of America was being settled from Europe, the Church received a new, yet deeper, wound.
Both Catholics and Orthodox held to "written and oral tradition," or, in other words, Scripture and Tradition. Both Catholics and Orthodox held that there are seven sacraments or mysteries. But a new thinking emerged to challenge these apostolic positions. The Reformation came and rejected parts of this inheritance. Reformers held to three or two or no sacraments, and oral tradition was largely rejected for the Bible alone. Men disputed whether some of the books of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles really should be there. The priesthood was seen as a magical, medieval and superstitious invention.
For Catholics, this "reform" of the Church "threw out the baby with bath water," to the point that bodies of believers who rejected such things stopped meriting the name "church." Most sacraments, and apostolic succession, were lost. This left a void in the fabric of Christian thought. The rapidly-dividing bodies of believers still had a place in their systems of thought for the corporate unity of believers in a society, "the church." But the Church governed by bishops succeeding apostles was not the accepted option. A new option emerged: a place to restart an "authentic" Christian body of believers in a fresh new world — America. The Church now had a new corporate, and political, rival.
The Church in America is Born
From the beginning of the settlement of the English colonies by Reformed Christians, the language that belongs to the Church appeared, but this time, applied to this new land, America. The political beginnings of the U.S. in these new settlements rapidly came to be called "the shining city on a hill. . .the New Jerusalem." This use of sacred language to earthly and political things is an error of doctrine writ large. A major part of settlement from England to America was done by religious minorities. Soon, Catholics, also a suspect minority (in fact, the most suspect minority), made their move to Maryland. Two "shining cities on a hill" were about to meet. They seemed incompatible and ready to clash; something had to give.
What gave was the small minority group of Catholic believers. By the time the colonies grew to declare independence, the Catholic Church was illegal in almost every single colony. Even Maryland saw Catholics move from being in power, to tolerated, to persecuted. When Father John Carroll returned home to the Maryland colony in the late 1700s, there was no public Catholic church to worship in; house churches had to do.
The response of Catholics to this mortal danger at the birth of the American democracy would be determined, in large part, by her shepherds and by America's prominent Catholic families. These two groups combined in a spectacular way in the Carroll family of Maryland. One of the richest families in the newly independent "United States of America," they provided two public servants to the new nation, including a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and America's first bishop. Instead of choosing to be a sign of contradiction and protecting "the Catholic difference" in this harsh American environment, they chose to compromise and fit in.
One member of the Carroll family expressed the opinion that it would be better not to have a bishop. Then, when one was to be chosen, the opinion was put forward that he not be appointed but elected, in order to conform to American politics. Latin, the uniting language of the Roman Church, was conceded to the vernacular of the nation to the detriment of the immigrants. Prelates began to obsequiously praise the nation and its leaders. The Catholic orthodox notion of the city on a hill was forced to bend to a new sectarian and secular one. In the meantime, the political bodies that came from the Reformation splintered even further. This erosion into more numerous and smaller groups continued and accelerated in America, and led to the invention of a new concept: "denominations."
Catholics partly recovered their identity in the 1800s, uniting in the face of persecution. New American hostilities developed to oppose Catholicism — the Know-Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Catholics of the Latin Church from Germany were especially fervent in defending and supporting the faith and the faithful in a full Catholic life. But the idea of compromise with the world also grew in parts of the Catholic Church in America. Some clerics even advocated public over parochial schools. The unholy idea of the superiority of the nation over Christ's Church reached a sorry low in the remarks of one Catholic bishop, who spoke of American ideals as "eternal."
The dangerous task of living the faith in America soon reached the attention of the Holy See. In 1899, America had the ignoble distinction of providing the name for a condemned heresy, "Americanism." In the person of Pope Leo XIII, through the letter Testem Benevolentiae (1899), the Holy See warned of accommodating the Church too closely to the spirit of the age. In the case before us, that spirit was and is democratic. It was a timely reminder, given that the body of Catholic believers was set to become so large that Catholics soon would soon become candidates for major office in the American democratic experiment.
The Church Arrives — to Integrity or Compromise?
Gov. Alfred Smith of New York captured the attention of the nation's Catholics when he was the nominee for President of the Democratic Party in 1928. A life-long Catholic, he paid for his faithfulness with a stinging loss to Herbert Hoover in the court of the American masses. His defeat was accompanied by a large sentiment of anti-Catholic prejudice in the American electorate. Some feared that the Vatican would have too much say in the running of the country. Yet, as Catholics, we know that the teaching authority of the Church rests upon the chair of St. Peter. Alfred Smith's painful lesson fueled compromise in the candidacy of Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1960. He spoke to the American Protestant majority with an attitude of near-total surrender. Catholics had "arrived," but to where and at what cost?
Sen. John F. Kennedy's deprecating remarks about Catholic integrity in public office foreshadowed today's particular and bloody issue of integrity in faith — the dignity of the youngest humans and their right to live before birth. Catholics would again step up to the plate for the national ticket, but this time prepared to fail the test of faith on a most concrete issue. Catholics had already surrendered identity and mission, but another battleground awaited — the Catholic conscience. And once again, the call to surrender was on the table.
Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro came to the national stage as a Catholic vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic ticket in 1984. Sen. John Kerry, another "conscience-challenged" Catholic, rose to the very top of the Democratic ticket in 2004. When Catholic teaching was misrepresented, the Church hierarchy rose to clarify the matter. Bishop John O'Connor of Scranton, soon to become John Cardinal O'Connor, archbishop of New York, confronted the errors of Ms. Ferraro on the national stage and publicly corrected her. Sen. Kerry was forced to carefully judge his attendance at Sunday Mass given the obvious fact that a politician who asserts the right of a government to allow citizens to take innocent human life is sinfully ineligible to receive Communion.
But the error of Ms. Ferraro and Sen. Kerry was really not that new or original. It had a basis in recent scholarship of Americans in Catholic settings. This scholarship is full of confusion and compromise. It manifests the idea that Catholic truth is to bow before the evolving American progressive and liberal consensus. History is rewritten to portray Catholic doctrine as unenlightened, erroneous, and changeable. In the case of abortion, the sanctity of life is ignored and the Catholic Church is slanderously portrayed as dogmatizing the passing fashions of science and philosophy. This slur against the Church then is used to justify the treason and sin of today's candidates, who wrap themselves in the flag of lady liberty, and hide their sin under the propaganda of "pro-choice." In the battle between the two cities, the new challenger has invaded the kingdom of the ancient heir and brought some of her faithful to yield. The enemy has entered the gates.
2008: The Battle Rages On!
Catholics in America have suffered grave wounds to identity and mission over the past two centuries. Yet, the greatest danger is the surrender of our consciences. The biggest issue of conscience is the right to life of the most vulnerable of the human family: the unborn, the handicapped newborns, and the frail elderly. Others argue that the war in Iraq is more important. Catholic teaching offers a way to sort through this dilemma. The war in Iraq, first invasion, then occupation, is viewed by Catholics through the lens of Just War doctrine. The invasion is complete, and the occupation continues with the goal of establishing a better regime in Iraq. As some hierarchs have pointed out, the application of the Catholic teaching on Just War is a prudential matter. In other words, there are times when the application of authentic faithful Catholicism permits differences of perception as to when a war is just. Such cases do, in fact, exist. The decision rests with the government authority, in this case, a non-Catholic, President George W. Bush.
The abortion issue, by way of contrast, is not prudential. Abortion is not a matter of situations, nor is it ever a permitted choice among options. The direct taking of an innocent life is never permitted — no exceptions. It is a matter of universal principle. No government has the right to deprive whole categories of the human family of their right to live; when a government does so, as in Roe vs. Wade in 1973, that government has violated itself.
Catholics have a moral duty to violate such laws. The danger to the moral legitimacy of the nation here is obvious. What is more important to Catholics, though, is the moral integrity of the Church. When politicians step forward claiming to be Catholics while endorsing the American un-Catholic concept of selective killing as a manifestation of liberty, the Catholic faithful are called to defend the Church against such attacks, and with urgency.
This year's election calls forth a faithful response in light of Catholic teaching. There are four candidates spread over two party tickets. They have found their places in the battle between the two shining cities on the hill.
The Republicans have brought forth Sen. John McCain, a non-Catholic Christian in a second marriage, with a history of helping the poor through adoption. His running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, is a Christian, apparently a former Catholic (as are many Americans), who speaks of the mythic American inheritance as a theological/national shining city on a hill, echoing President Ronald Reagan. Both Republican candidates are very pro-life.
The Democrats have brought forth Sen. Barack Obama, an American with a background of an immigrant Muslim father and a Christian mother, whose secular community organizing work led him to a racially-focused Protestant community which offers sharp denunciations of America, especially white America. He is, in the view of many, the candidate with the most violently anti-life record nominated by either major party, ever. His running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden, wandered from a Catholic, mainstream, Irish working-class background to endorse the un-Catholic notions of a violent "pro-choice" position. Violence with a smile and a smooth tone is still violence.
The famous Catholic thinker in 20th Century America, Father John Courtney Murray, was prophetic when he warned that the modern barbarian wears a Brooks Brothers suit. Sen. Biden found a partner in darkness in the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, another Catholic with a faith problem. The slander of Sen. Biden and Speaker Pelosi against their own Church merits a closer look.
Speaker Pelosi made the first step with false accusations against her own Church. She soiled the reputation of the Catholic Church by portraying herself as an ardent Catholic who had studied the issue, alleging that Catholics don't know when life begins and dragging St. Augustine into her dark portrait of ignorance. The Catholic Church, whose very mission is to embrace all truth, with an abundant history of loving and promoting learning, and a thousand-year history of founding and supporting universities, eagerly endorses all new learning, including scientific advances. St. Augustine sought the best science of his time, as a good Catholic always will. But in the 1800s, medicine came to a firm knowledge of male and female seed and fertilization as the beginning of life. These discoveries sparked a physician's crusade against abortion in the 1800s in America. The refusal of the Catholic Church to allow any direct abortion is based on the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
Abortion is impermissible in the private lives of Catholics and in their public service. This is a matter of integrity. A good Catholic has no cause to resist truth; Speaker Pelosi, however, is a fugitive on the run from the truth. She should not be permitted to drag the Church's reputation with her.
Sen. Biden says he wants to be a practicing Catholic. Well, his own Catholic bishops have made it easy for him. The Catholic bishops in America have corrected his error in a way that even people who can't understand science can grasp. It's not above his pay grade, not at all. Truth isn't personal or private; it's for everyone. Catholics, by their very name — after all, "Catholic" means "according to the whole" — understand this best of all. A morality so personal we wouldn't impose it on ourselves is no morality at all. We don't check our consciences at the door when we go to work. Sen. Biden's opportunity to be faithful is quite simple, but will he go there? He talks a lot about where he came from, so will he remember where he came from when the chips are down for today's youngsters? And if he forgets where he came from when it comes to the children, should the people who came from where he came from bother to remember him? God bless ya, Sen. Biden! Really.
Today's basic civilization issue of life sets atop a great shifting field of battle. It is worthwhile to understand how so. At first glance, the ideologies of Sen. Obama and Gov. Palin appear to be polar opposites. A deeper analysis shows, however, that both come from a common root. Gov. Palin's ideology finds a place for America in salvation history as a providential good. The theological system of Sen. Obama's faith community portrays America a place of substantial evil in the economy of salvation. Both share a common idea: that America has a major place in God's plan for the world. But neither of these views has a place in Catholic revelation. Cities that kill their own children don't belong on a hill, and they don't shine either. For Catholics, there is one shining city on a hill, one New Jerusalem, and she is the Church. And we must defend our Church in our public life, in any election campaign, against all attacks.
These elections present the Church with a challenge: that faithful Catholics maintain their integrity and conscience in the public forum. Those who fail to do so should be corrected publicly, by both Church hierarchs and faithful Catholics. Many Catholic hierarchs have done so over the past few months. We should support them by pointing out the betrayal of the Catholic Church that "Catholic" politicians engage in by the violence of their "pro-choice" stands. We should let such politicians know that they have betrayed both God and fellow Catholics. We might thereby bring back an errant brother, and we might also reconvert a governor in the process. The battle is joined — to the barricades! Shine forth in splendor, New Jerusalem!
Father Robert Markovitch, B.A., M.A., S.T.B., M.D., is currently serving as the pastor of Saint Nicholas Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Booklyn, NY, and the Blessed Mykola Charnetsky Mission in Manhattan Beach, NY. He was born in Lorain, Ohio, and attended Northwestern University, obtaining a BA in Psychology. Father Robert became a medical doctor in 1987, receiving his M.D. degree from the Medical College of Ohio. After medical training at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA and McKeesport Hospital in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, he became a board-certified family doctor. Dr. Robert also testified before a committee of the Ohio State Legislature on psychiatric sequelae to abortion. After receiving graduate degrees in philosophy (M.A.) and theology (S.T.B., pontifical degree), Dr. Markovitch was ordained to the priesthood in January 2001. His first pastoral assignment was at St. Josaphat's in Rochester, NY, where he also did volunteer medical work at a clinic run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. Since 2003, Father Robert has also served as pastor at St. Nicholas in Hudson, NY, and St. John the Baptist in Pittsfield, in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts.
© Matt C. Abbott
By The following essay was provided to me, upon my request, by Father Robert Markovitch, M.D., a Catholic priest of the Eastern rite. (For those who would like to disseminate Father Markovitch's essay, I ask only that you link to and/or cite my column as the original source.)
By Father Robert Markovitch
Having trouble sorting through the issues important to Catholics in the upcoming elections? A good and wise sense of history will help one see clearly.
We Catholics belong to a society, the Catholic Church, in which the fullness of the Church founded by Christ abides in a stable manner. However, we Catholics do have problems at the local level. If you want to know what these problems are, look to the beginning of the Catholic Church in this American democracy and notice what was new and interesting at that time. The stage was set for these new challenges when Catholicism first arrived in the New World.
As we travel through history, it should become apparent that our beloved Catholic Church is in a battle with a competitor and is in danger of becoming the victim of identity theft. When the danger is apparent, who will step forward to defend our Church?
The Catholic Church Before America
The Church in America came from Europe, where she had weathered many storms. Christ gave full power to the Apostles, some of whom preached in Europe, and they established this power in bishops. The first storm that caused significant damage to the Church in Europe was the Great Schism. The Church breathed with two lungs, Greek and Latin, but split into a schism of two groups of bishops. Latin Catholics stayed in unity with Rome — most Greeks landed outside of union with Rome as the "Orthodox Church" — though a substantial minority found themselves to be "Greek Catholics" in full union with Rome. Then, just when the "New World" of America was being settled from Europe, the Church received a new, yet deeper, wound.
Both Catholics and Orthodox held to "written and oral tradition," or, in other words, Scripture and Tradition. Both Catholics and Orthodox held that there are seven sacraments or mysteries. But a new thinking emerged to challenge these apostolic positions. The Reformation came and rejected parts of this inheritance. Reformers held to three or two or no sacraments, and oral tradition was largely rejected for the Bible alone. Men disputed whether some of the books of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles really should be there. The priesthood was seen as a magical, medieval and superstitious invention.
For Catholics, this "reform" of the Church "threw out the baby with bath water," to the point that bodies of believers who rejected such things stopped meriting the name "church." Most sacraments, and apostolic succession, were lost. This left a void in the fabric of Christian thought. The rapidly-dividing bodies of believers still had a place in their systems of thought for the corporate unity of believers in a society, "the church." But the Church governed by bishops succeeding apostles was not the accepted option. A new option emerged: a place to restart an "authentic" Christian body of believers in a fresh new world — America. The Church now had a new corporate, and political, rival.
The Church in America is Born
From the beginning of the settlement of the English colonies by Reformed Christians, the language that belongs to the Church appeared, but this time, applied to this new land, America. The political beginnings of the U.S. in these new settlements rapidly came to be called "the shining city on a hill. . .the New Jerusalem." This use of sacred language to earthly and political things is an error of doctrine writ large. A major part of settlement from England to America was done by religious minorities. Soon, Catholics, also a suspect minority (in fact, the most suspect minority), made their move to Maryland. Two "shining cities on a hill" were about to meet. They seemed incompatible and ready to clash; something had to give.
What gave was the small minority group of Catholic believers. By the time the colonies grew to declare independence, the Catholic Church was illegal in almost every single colony. Even Maryland saw Catholics move from being in power, to tolerated, to persecuted. When Father John Carroll returned home to the Maryland colony in the late 1700s, there was no public Catholic church to worship in; house churches had to do.
The response of Catholics to this mortal danger at the birth of the American democracy would be determined, in large part, by her shepherds and by America's prominent Catholic families. These two groups combined in a spectacular way in the Carroll family of Maryland. One of the richest families in the newly independent "United States of America," they provided two public servants to the new nation, including a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and America's first bishop. Instead of choosing to be a sign of contradiction and protecting "the Catholic difference" in this harsh American environment, they chose to compromise and fit in.
One member of the Carroll family expressed the opinion that it would be better not to have a bishop. Then, when one was to be chosen, the opinion was put forward that he not be appointed but elected, in order to conform to American politics. Latin, the uniting language of the Roman Church, was conceded to the vernacular of the nation to the detriment of the immigrants. Prelates began to obsequiously praise the nation and its leaders. The Catholic orthodox notion of the city on a hill was forced to bend to a new sectarian and secular one. In the meantime, the political bodies that came from the Reformation splintered even further. This erosion into more numerous and smaller groups continued and accelerated in America, and led to the invention of a new concept: "denominations."
Catholics partly recovered their identity in the 1800s, uniting in the face of persecution. New American hostilities developed to oppose Catholicism — the Know-Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Catholics of the Latin Church from Germany were especially fervent in defending and supporting the faith and the faithful in a full Catholic life. But the idea of compromise with the world also grew in parts of the Catholic Church in America. Some clerics even advocated public over parochial schools. The unholy idea of the superiority of the nation over Christ's Church reached a sorry low in the remarks of one Catholic bishop, who spoke of American ideals as "eternal."
The dangerous task of living the faith in America soon reached the attention of the Holy See. In 1899, America had the ignoble distinction of providing the name for a condemned heresy, "Americanism." In the person of Pope Leo XIII, through the letter Testem Benevolentiae (1899), the Holy See warned of accommodating the Church too closely to the spirit of the age. In the case before us, that spirit was and is democratic. It was a timely reminder, given that the body of Catholic believers was set to become so large that Catholics soon would soon become candidates for major office in the American democratic experiment.
The Church Arrives — to Integrity or Compromise?
Gov. Alfred Smith of New York captured the attention of the nation's Catholics when he was the nominee for President of the Democratic Party in 1928. A life-long Catholic, he paid for his faithfulness with a stinging loss to Herbert Hoover in the court of the American masses. His defeat was accompanied by a large sentiment of anti-Catholic prejudice in the American electorate. Some feared that the Vatican would have too much say in the running of the country. Yet, as Catholics, we know that the teaching authority of the Church rests upon the chair of St. Peter. Alfred Smith's painful lesson fueled compromise in the candidacy of Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1960. He spoke to the American Protestant majority with an attitude of near-total surrender. Catholics had "arrived," but to where and at what cost?
Sen. John F. Kennedy's deprecating remarks about Catholic integrity in public office foreshadowed today's particular and bloody issue of integrity in faith — the dignity of the youngest humans and their right to live before birth. Catholics would again step up to the plate for the national ticket, but this time prepared to fail the test of faith on a most concrete issue. Catholics had already surrendered identity and mission, but another battleground awaited — the Catholic conscience. And once again, the call to surrender was on the table.
Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro came to the national stage as a Catholic vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic ticket in 1984. Sen. John Kerry, another "conscience-challenged" Catholic, rose to the very top of the Democratic ticket in 2004. When Catholic teaching was misrepresented, the Church hierarchy rose to clarify the matter. Bishop John O'Connor of Scranton, soon to become John Cardinal O'Connor, archbishop of New York, confronted the errors of Ms. Ferraro on the national stage and publicly corrected her. Sen. Kerry was forced to carefully judge his attendance at Sunday Mass given the obvious fact that a politician who asserts the right of a government to allow citizens to take innocent human life is sinfully ineligible to receive Communion.
But the error of Ms. Ferraro and Sen. Kerry was really not that new or original. It had a basis in recent scholarship of Americans in Catholic settings. This scholarship is full of confusion and compromise. It manifests the idea that Catholic truth is to bow before the evolving American progressive and liberal consensus. History is rewritten to portray Catholic doctrine as unenlightened, erroneous, and changeable. In the case of abortion, the sanctity of life is ignored and the Catholic Church is slanderously portrayed as dogmatizing the passing fashions of science and philosophy. This slur against the Church then is used to justify the treason and sin of today's candidates, who wrap themselves in the flag of lady liberty, and hide their sin under the propaganda of "pro-choice." In the battle between the two cities, the new challenger has invaded the kingdom of the ancient heir and brought some of her faithful to yield. The enemy has entered the gates.
2008: The Battle Rages On!
Catholics in America have suffered grave wounds to identity and mission over the past two centuries. Yet, the greatest danger is the surrender of our consciences. The biggest issue of conscience is the right to life of the most vulnerable of the human family: the unborn, the handicapped newborns, and the frail elderly. Others argue that the war in Iraq is more important. Catholic teaching offers a way to sort through this dilemma. The war in Iraq, first invasion, then occupation, is viewed by Catholics through the lens of Just War doctrine. The invasion is complete, and the occupation continues with the goal of establishing a better regime in Iraq. As some hierarchs have pointed out, the application of the Catholic teaching on Just War is a prudential matter. In other words, there are times when the application of authentic faithful Catholicism permits differences of perception as to when a war is just. Such cases do, in fact, exist. The decision rests with the government authority, in this case, a non-Catholic, President George W. Bush.
The abortion issue, by way of contrast, is not prudential. Abortion is not a matter of situations, nor is it ever a permitted choice among options. The direct taking of an innocent life is never permitted — no exceptions. It is a matter of universal principle. No government has the right to deprive whole categories of the human family of their right to live; when a government does so, as in Roe vs. Wade in 1973, that government has violated itself.
Catholics have a moral duty to violate such laws. The danger to the moral legitimacy of the nation here is obvious. What is more important to Catholics, though, is the moral integrity of the Church. When politicians step forward claiming to be Catholics while endorsing the American un-Catholic concept of selective killing as a manifestation of liberty, the Catholic faithful are called to defend the Church against such attacks, and with urgency.
This year's election calls forth a faithful response in light of Catholic teaching. There are four candidates spread over two party tickets. They have found their places in the battle between the two shining cities on the hill.
The Republicans have brought forth Sen. John McCain, a non-Catholic Christian in a second marriage, with a history of helping the poor through adoption. His running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, is a Christian, apparently a former Catholic (as are many Americans), who speaks of the mythic American inheritance as a theological/national shining city on a hill, echoing President Ronald Reagan. Both Republican candidates are very pro-life.
The Democrats have brought forth Sen. Barack Obama, an American with a background of an immigrant Muslim father and a Christian mother, whose secular community organizing work led him to a racially-focused Protestant community which offers sharp denunciations of America, especially white America. He is, in the view of many, the candidate with the most violently anti-life record nominated by either major party, ever. His running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden, wandered from a Catholic, mainstream, Irish working-class background to endorse the un-Catholic notions of a violent "pro-choice" position. Violence with a smile and a smooth tone is still violence.
The famous Catholic thinker in 20th Century America, Father John Courtney Murray, was prophetic when he warned that the modern barbarian wears a Brooks Brothers suit. Sen. Biden found a partner in darkness in the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, another Catholic with a faith problem. The slander of Sen. Biden and Speaker Pelosi against their own Church merits a closer look.
Speaker Pelosi made the first step with false accusations against her own Church. She soiled the reputation of the Catholic Church by portraying herself as an ardent Catholic who had studied the issue, alleging that Catholics don't know when life begins and dragging St. Augustine into her dark portrait of ignorance. The Catholic Church, whose very mission is to embrace all truth, with an abundant history of loving and promoting learning, and a thousand-year history of founding and supporting universities, eagerly endorses all new learning, including scientific advances. St. Augustine sought the best science of his time, as a good Catholic always will. But in the 1800s, medicine came to a firm knowledge of male and female seed and fertilization as the beginning of life. These discoveries sparked a physician's crusade against abortion in the 1800s in America. The refusal of the Catholic Church to allow any direct abortion is based on the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
Abortion is impermissible in the private lives of Catholics and in their public service. This is a matter of integrity. A good Catholic has no cause to resist truth; Speaker Pelosi, however, is a fugitive on the run from the truth. She should not be permitted to drag the Church's reputation with her.
Sen. Biden says he wants to be a practicing Catholic. Well, his own Catholic bishops have made it easy for him. The Catholic bishops in America have corrected his error in a way that even people who can't understand science can grasp. It's not above his pay grade, not at all. Truth isn't personal or private; it's for everyone. Catholics, by their very name — after all, "Catholic" means "according to the whole" — understand this best of all. A morality so personal we wouldn't impose it on ourselves is no morality at all. We don't check our consciences at the door when we go to work. Sen. Biden's opportunity to be faithful is quite simple, but will he go there? He talks a lot about where he came from, so will he remember where he came from when the chips are down for today's youngsters? And if he forgets where he came from when it comes to the children, should the people who came from where he came from bother to remember him? God bless ya, Sen. Biden! Really.
Today's basic civilization issue of life sets atop a great shifting field of battle. It is worthwhile to understand how so. At first glance, the ideologies of Sen. Obama and Gov. Palin appear to be polar opposites. A deeper analysis shows, however, that both come from a common root. Gov. Palin's ideology finds a place for America in salvation history as a providential good. The theological system of Sen. Obama's faith community portrays America a place of substantial evil in the economy of salvation. Both share a common idea: that America has a major place in God's plan for the world. But neither of these views has a place in Catholic revelation. Cities that kill their own children don't belong on a hill, and they don't shine either. For Catholics, there is one shining city on a hill, one New Jerusalem, and she is the Church. And we must defend our Church in our public life, in any election campaign, against all attacks.
These elections present the Church with a challenge: that faithful Catholics maintain their integrity and conscience in the public forum. Those who fail to do so should be corrected publicly, by both Church hierarchs and faithful Catholics. Many Catholic hierarchs have done so over the past few months. We should support them by pointing out the betrayal of the Catholic Church that "Catholic" politicians engage in by the violence of their "pro-choice" stands. We should let such politicians know that they have betrayed both God and fellow Catholics. We might thereby bring back an errant brother, and we might also reconvert a governor in the process. The battle is joined — to the barricades! Shine forth in splendor, New Jerusalem!
Father Robert Markovitch, B.A., M.A., S.T.B., M.D., is currently serving as the pastor of Saint Nicholas Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Booklyn, NY, and the Blessed Mykola Charnetsky Mission in Manhattan Beach, NY. He was born in Lorain, Ohio, and attended Northwestern University, obtaining a BA in Psychology. Father Robert became a medical doctor in 1987, receiving his M.D. degree from the Medical College of Ohio. After medical training at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA and McKeesport Hospital in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, he became a board-certified family doctor. Dr. Robert also testified before a committee of the Ohio State Legislature on psychiatric sequelae to abortion. After receiving graduate degrees in philosophy (M.A.) and theology (S.T.B., pontifical degree), Dr. Markovitch was ordained to the priesthood in January 2001. His first pastoral assignment was at St. Josaphat's in Rochester, NY, where he also did volunteer medical work at a clinic run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. Since 2003, Father Robert has also served as pastor at St. Nicholas in Hudson, NY, and St. John the Baptist in Pittsfield, in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts.
© Matt C. Abbott
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